IMMIGRANTS IN INDIA

Anatomically modern humans settled in India in multiple waves of early migrations, over tens of millennia. The first migrants came with the Coastal Migration/Southern Dispersal 65,000 years ago.

India has been receiving large numbers of immigrants, mostly from the neighboring countries of South Asia, and also some from other parts of the world, and hence she needs to be seen as a major immigration country. Here we are referring to immigrants, not invaders. Today we will dig deeper to provide you a detailed account of such immigrants. It argues that India needs to differentiate between the stocks and the flows of its immigrant population. Also, it would no doubt be in the larger interests of the country to control the unabated flows of migrants from across the borders and minimize their negative effects, but one must not lose sight of the components of a humane migration policy, including investment in the human capital of the migrant population.

Anatomically modern humans settled in India in multiple waves of early migrations, over tens of millennia. The first migrants came with the Coastal Migration/Southern Dispersal 65,000 years ago, whereafter complex migrations within South and Southeast Asia took place. West Asian (Iranian) hunter-gatherers migrated to South Asia after the Last Glacial Period but before the onset of farming. Together with ancient South Asian hunter-gatherers they formed the population of the Indus Valley Civilization (IVC).